One thing I’ve been really enjoying lately is making content based on new research.
It’s really cool being able to learn and share all this fancy new data with you guys.
Maybe I can make a series out of it, and call it something like “New Studies that can
help with your gains but disclaimer it’s only one study so take it with a grain of
salt Sundays.”
Really rolls off the tongue.
Anyway, new research time!
And this one seems fun and might be relevant to you if you’re one of those overachievers
that like to do cardio, aka aerobic exercise, alongside your resistance training.
I mean, that includes me too, if we’re counting aggressively shaking my protein bottle for
about 40 seconds, then yea, I LOVE CARDIO.
But this new systematic review might have you questioning combining your cardio and
weight training, cause the stories you’ve heard about them not mingling well together
in terms of your gains… might have a LITTLE bit of truth to it.
Foreshadowing: LITTLE.
And, with a LITTLE bit of nuance to consider, it can ease your concerns, or maybe not, we’ll
see.
Disclaimer: Like with any new research, it is important to remember that this is only
one study and should not fully dictate your future decisions.
It’s simply one more piece of the fitness puzzle that you can try to see if it works
for you.
However, if it does increases your gains by 9000%, then please feel free to come back
to this video and give me full credit.
Now to the data.
First, this research is a systematic review and meta-analysis, which is a type of study
that looks into the data of multiple others studies in order to come to a more robust
conclusion.
More specifically, 43 studies were included in this review with 1,090 participants spanning
a wide range of ages and training levels.
With the hypothesis of combining cardio alongside strength training potentially suppressing
or interfering with strength adaptations, the ultimate goal of this review was to measure
just that.
Will the combination of aerobic and strength training, aka concurrent training, lead to
different outcomes compared to strength training alone.
Different timings were considered, too, whether aerobic and strength exercises were performed
on separate days, separate sessions in the same day, or in the same session.
A little extra perspective.
As far as measured outcomes, the data looked into three main ones: maximal strength, assessed
through things like 1RM squats and leg presses.
Explosive strength, measured through things like jump height and squat-jump power.
And, muscle growth, measuring size difference in quad muscles.
In the end, the results of two of the measured outcomes might not be too surprising, but
the third one has a slightly interesting twist.
Maximal strength, as shown in this cool forest plot of the relevant studies, appear to have
no difference in outcome between concurrent training compared to strength training only
when taking all the data into consideration.
Muscle growth also fortunately seem to be pretty even whether you decide to strength
train only or add cardio to it.
Explosive strength, however, shakes things up just a bit.
In this case, there does seem to be some sort of interference effect when aerobic training
is added to the mix.
However, the little twist here is that it’s not the case for ALL types of concurrent training.
Rather, the most we see concurrent training impacting explosive strength is when the aerobic
exercise performed was cycling and not running, and only when it was performed in the same
SESSION as the strength training.
Same session in this case is a break less than 20 minutes between aerobic and strength
exercises.
There is something quite important to point out here though.
When we look at the forest plot, there is this one study by Mikkola et al in 2021 that
seems to go way to the side more than others do.
This indicates that the outcomes measured in the Mikkola study was very different to
the rest, which makes it a potential outlier that can heavily influence the overall results.
The researchers knew this, and when they decided to take this specific study out of their equation,
the overall differences in the outcome became notably weaker.
At this point, the only thing that somewhat stood out was that same-session concurrent
training still lead to weaker explosive strength adaptation but not as bad as before.
So quick summary: Performic aerobic exercise alongside your
strength training seem to have little impact on your maximal strength and muscle gains.
It might, however, have a slight impact on explosive gains.
There is one glaring limitation to this review though!
Unfortunately, the INTENSITY of the aerobic training for the studies were not clear, largely
because the researchers of the review could not get in contact with the majority of the
43 studies’ own researchers for clarification, thus they decided to leave it out.
Of course, intensity can very well change the outcome, since there is a stark difference
in something like doing steady state cardio and high intensity interval training.
This, again, reinforces the disclaimer that this is indeed one review, and although robust
in its findings, still is not completely clear.
So what does all of this new data ultimately mean?
Does it mean that we should or should not do cardio alongside our strength trainings?
For the most part, it means that doing cardio and resistance training together really isn’t
bad.
Unless you’re in a sport that requires a decent amount of explosiveness, you should
be fine.
And even if you are, doing them on different days should clean things up.
We also have to look beyond just strength adaptations, because even though DOING cardio
sucks, the benefits, like improved VO2max, which is a measurement of one’s overall
endurance fitness, which 99.9% of gym bros most certainly can work on, and improved cardiovascular
health are super duper cool in my book.
So I’m sorry cardio haters, this is one less excuse for you not to do your cardio.
You can only shake your protein bottle for so long.
Go on the tread, go on the bike, play an hour of Dark Souls, whatever you can do to get
that heart rate up.
Your gains will be just fine.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it an explosive thumbs up and share it with your
cardio-loving friends.
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And finally, as always, don’t forget to GET YOUR PROTEIN!